When far-right leader Geert Wilders delivered his victory speech after the shock Dutch election result, he emphasized a willingness to compromise with other parties.
But his campaign had hit on all the familiar themes of his long crusade against the migrants that he says are destroying his country’s culture. People don’t forget those kind of diatribes, and many voters who backed other parties are worried that the Netherlands is about to lurch into the kind of populist politics that characterized Donald Trump’s presidency in the US.
Just like Trump, Wilders cultivates an eye-catching splash of hair and, in the final days of the campaign, he had taken to wearing red ties rather than his usual blue, as if to emphasize the visual similarities. As he soaked up the attention in the aftermath of his victory, he was happy to entertain the comparison.
“People have come up with so many names for me,” he told reporters on Thursday. “Some say I am the Dutch Trump, others call me Geert Milders” — a jibe that suggests his views have suddenly and conveniently become more mild since he began trying to form a coalition.
“The truth is somewhere in the middle,” he suggested.
Wilders appeared to be signaling to potential partners that he had indeed softened his views. But perhaps what has really changed over the last 20 years is less the Freedom Party leader than the country around him.
Excluding immigrants from the European Union’s fifth-largest economy has been a career defining passion for the 60-year-old who is now longest serving lawmaker in the Dutch parliament.
He began his career in the liberal VVD which became the natural party of government during Mark Rutte’s 13 years in power. Wilders split from the VVD to strike out on his own in the early 2000s — before Trump had even started hosting the Celebrity Apprentice.
In the early 2000s he was banned from traveling to the UK under a law designed to exclude extremists - although that restriction was successfully overturned in one of so many encounters with the authorities. He’s also been censured for insulting Moroccans, acquitted of inciting hatred and suspended from Twitter, as it was then known, for attacking Islam.
The late success of his political career nevertheless owes something to the man who’s battling to return to the White House next year. Both present themselves as the fighting for the ordinary people and railing against the elites.
“Trump came after him, but Trump must have been an inspiration and a catalyst,” said Stefan Couperus, an associate professor of political science at Groningen University. “Trump has normalized the politics of bad manners, and Wilders does that as well.”
Wilders had articulated his political strategy back in 2003 — in a conversation with the then-future prime minister, Rutte. His idea, he said, was “to know which topics you want to claim.”
Since then he has broadened his repertoire, tapping into worries about the welfare state, healthcare and affordable housing to appeal to more voters.
But when Rutte’s fourth and final coalition collapsed this year due to a dispute about immigration, Wilders was positioned to capitalize. Other parties hardened their line in an effort to compete, but Wilders has spent a career making that territory his own.
“When it comes to immigration, it is logical that voters go for ‘the original’ and not for the copy,” Sarah de Lange, Professor of Political Pluralism at University of Amsterdam said on X.
And now he faces the complex task of recruiting the allies he needs to form a government and consolidate that victory.
The Freedom Party’s 37 seats give Wilders a larger lead over the other parties than any poll was predicting. But he still needs allies — 15 parties ended up represented in parliament, and he cannot govern without coming to an agreement with at least some of them.
As he begins that task, Couperus says, observers shouldn’t be expecting any of the chaotic exploits that have sometimes undermined Trump.
“Wilders is way smarter” than Trump, Couperus said. “Trump causes a lot of collateral damage and that won’t happen to Wilders.”
--With assistance from Wout Vergauwen and Sarah Jacob.
